Documentary Practice
Encyclopedia
Documentary practice is the process of creating documentary projects. It refers to what people do with media devices, content, form, and production strategies in order to address the creative, ethical, and conceptual problems and choices that arise as they make documentary films or other similar presentations based on fact or reality. Colleges and universities offer courses and programs in documentary practice (see External Links).
Traditional definitions put forth by scholars of documentary film address documentary practice in terms of formal codes, categories and conventions. These are used by filmmakers to create "non-fictional" representations of the historical world. Subsequent definitions made by others define various approaches to documentary in terms of how they use such rhetorical strategies as voice, structure and style. Such definitions focus on finished documentary projects and how they measure up to contemporary notions of truth and representation.
However, recent cultural, technological, stylistic, and social shifts have turned attention in documentary studies to the process of documenting as such. Documentary-makers and scholars alike are showing interest in the present moment and how new media tools can be used by documentary-makers to initiate formation of new communities, conversations, and ways of being together.
Such interests characterized Conceptual Art
works of the 1960s and 1970s. The connective potentialities of art as a practice are currently being explored in the contemporary Relational Aesthetics movement. In these movements, the potentialities and dilemmas of aesthetic practice take precedence over traditional concerns with the finished artwork. Likewise, growing interest in documentary as a practice is opening the definition of documentary beyond considerations of finished documents, to include the act of documenting itself. This expansion of the definition of documentary work became possible when consumer-level video cameras became widely available. Some collectives of video producers used this new technology to address issues such as politics of cultural representation, the critique of daily life, the deconstruction of culture control mechanisms, and the subversion of authority.
While practices of documentary-makers continue to be informed by existing documentary traditions, Conventions in documentary
, and genres, they are also reshaped by emerging media environments, content, devices and uses for those devices. Emerging media, in turn, are greatly affected by their political, economic, and cultural contexts. Various emerging technologies and the situations in which they are used present documentary-makers with new challenges, opportunities, and dilemmas. This makes documentary practice dynamic and ever-evolving.
Many documentary-makers seek innovative approaches to their field in response to emerging technologies and the practices they make possible. Continuous innovation in documentary practice prevents the "documentary idea" from becoming stagnant or locked into any single generic form. This challenges each generation of documentary-makers and viewers to approach documentary-making as a living practice.
and Direct Cinema
began to appear in the mid-1950s when technological developments made film and then video
more portable, accessible and affordable. This allowed more people to engage in the practice of documenting. The 1991 video of Rodney King
being subjected to police restraint is an example of the continuing power of this shift. An ordinary citizen was able to capture the police brutality
with his camcorder, transforming him from a witness to an amateur documentary filmmaker. Scholars have cited the events following the widespread dissemination of the Rodney King video as one of the earliest examples of "participatory culture
."
Today's new media
continue to reshape documentary practices in significant ways. Recording technologies embedded within personal portable devices such as video-equipped mobile phones and hand-held digital video
and still cameras have made it possible for vast numbers of people to engage in citizen journalism
and "documentary practices." Additionally, Web 2.0
platforms such as video and photo-sharing websites and blogs now enable amateur "documentarians" to share and collaborate on content in ways never before possible. A practice that Howard Rheingold
and Justin Hall
have labeled p2p Journalism
, now exists at the blurred boundary where traditional definitions of journalism
and documentary
meet and influence each other.
Promises of new media technologies have raised expectations of a freer flow of ideas and content. Scholars are studying how participants in documenting practices engage in the social process of acquiring knowledge, sharing stories, and documenting events-in-the-making. Through such practices, social ties among people and groups as they arbitrate what qualifies as knowledge evolve continuously, facilitating the emergence of what Pierre Lévy refers to as collective intelligence
.
By enabling more people to record and share their experiences, emerging media technologies have transformed the way people document reality and how they participate in the very events that they are documenting. Everyday life can become performative as people respond to encounters and events through documentary practices, creating records of daily life which they then share with others via the Internet. For many people, digital media-making becomes a form of documentary practice when the results are created for and shared via social-networking sites like MySpace
, Flickr
and Facebook
.
The 2006 documentary of a Beastie Boys
concert, Awesome; I F***n' Shot That!, directed by Adam Yauch
, is an example of how participation in documentary practices transforms the way people take part in events such as concerts. A live performance in 2004 was documented by 50 fans who were all given Hi8 cameras and told to film their experience of the concert. Their footage was later edited together with professionally shot footage. It provided contrasting points of view and established dialogue between artists and fans.
Some scholars argue that as an increasingly widespread practice, the nascent cellphone documentary genre creates more possibilities and forms of social agency; people use cell phones to document public events and network their collective responses; others have used their phones to mobilize crowds during public demonstrations.
created its foundations. (see External Links)
Today, people use mobile devices in ways that open new possibilities for the practices of documenting—especially those practices involved in efforts to achieve "filmic truth." For example, in June 2006 a 93-minute remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini
's documentary entitled Love Meetings
(1965), in which he interviewed Italian citizens about their views on sex in postwar Italy, was shot entirely on a cell phone by Marcello Mencarini and Barbara Seghezzi. Entitled New Love Meetings, the remake was filmed in MPEG4 format using a Nokia N90. It is the first feature-length movie to be shot entirely on a mobile phone. Their premise was that even though they asked their subjects the same questions that Pasolini had posed, the results of their documentary would be clearly influenced by the medium they used to capture the images. They believed that the use of a cellphone, an instrument of daily life, produced an intimacy absent in Pasolini's movie, making people more spontaneous and open, creating a dialogue more like a chat than an interview. They propose that the line between subject and observer becomes thinner through such practices, as the documentary film-makers present themselves as "normal people" using their cell phones to preserve an instant. New Love Meetings is a prime example of how a specific emerging technology, the mobile phone, is shifting documentary practice today. (see External Links)
The use of the so-called "fourth screen
" (the first screen being cinema, the second television, the third the computer, the fourth the mobile device) as a documentary tool has become a subject of academic study. In fall of 2007, graduate students of The New School
produced an experimental five-minute metadocumentary shot with three cell phones. It explored the possibilities of mobile media devices as a medium for documentary practice by using them to restate Dziga Vertov's perspectives on filmic truth as expressed in his film: Man with a Movie Camera
.
is the act of observation or monitoring, usually of places, people, and activity, and typically without the subject's knowledge. Much of contemporary surveillance involves observation from a distance with the help of electronic devices, such as telephone tapping
, directional microphones
, covert listening device
s or "bugs", subminiature cameras, closed-circuit television
, GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking
, electronic tagging
, motion tracking
, satellite
s, internet and computer surveillance
.
Historically, surveillance has often been associated with governmental and other large organizational security practices. However, artists and activists have challenged those conventional practices. An early example is the film Empire
, made by artist Andy Warhol
in 1964. It consisted of an extreme long shot of the Empire State Building
, held for eight hours in real time, challenging the boundaries of surveillance and watchability. More recently, scholars such as UCLA cinema professor Steve Mamber, have turned attention to the growing trend of using inexpensive, small cameras to unobtrusively record events of daily life. To examine hidden-camera video practices, in 2003 Mamber asked acquaintances if they or anyone they knew might have access to such footage, creating an online archive of the footage. Mamber described the growing practice as "both a widely pervasive activity and an oddly unexamined one." In response, he established the UCLA Center for Hidden Camera Research, another example of how emerging technologies are shifting documentary practice. (see External Links)
Another practice that has emerged out of the introduction of new surveillance technologies is "inverse surveillance", also known as Sousveillance
. Launched in 2004, CARPE (Capture, Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences)is a project conceived with the idea of recording and archiving one's whole life. Some of the technologies developed within this project have become potential new tools of documentary practice. For example, the EyeTap
, developed by University of Toronto Professor Steve Mann, presents itself as an ideal device for continuous and inconspicuous recording as well as inverse surveillance.
Some scholars assert that these new devices enable us to imagine a new form of citizenship (the "monitorial citizen") that hinges on documentary practices. This concept is illustrated by parents watching their small children at the community pool. They look inactive, but they are poised for action if action is required. The emphasis is not so much on information gathering as it is on keeping a watchful eye—even while the monitorial citizen is doing something else.
Projects such as The Canary Project’s photographic monitoring of global warming effects (see External Links) and the Center for Land Use Interpretation
's Data Base of citizen-created documentation of land use practices exemplify the link between surveillance, emerging documentary practices and monitorial citizenship.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science
, in partnership with Amnesty International
, presents another example of how new media are allowing surveillance and documentary practices to inform each other. This partnership uses satellite imagery
to help NGOs document atrocities in isolated crisis zones such as Darfur
and Zimbabwe
. By purchasing images from commercial satellites that correspond to mapping coordinates, NGOs are increasingly able to provide visual evidence of refugee camps and burned villages; events and activities that would be impossible to image without the satellite technology. (see External Links)
have been created to orient people. They have delineated boundaries by using static, two-dimensional symbols to represent dynamic, three-dimensional spaces that undergo continual change. Both form and content are fixed in these traditional maps, leaving out the real-time experiences of those people who live in and define the space being represented. However, the proliferation of portable media devices that can record and distribute digital images, video, audio and text, combined with the capability to reach previously unreachable audiences via the Web and through vast wireless networks, now makes it possible to transform conventional maps into living documents.
New, map-based documentary practices employ maps as useful tools for interrogating the present, transforming maps from static representations into events-in-the-making. Personal narratives, experiences, and memories are being used to create maps that represent social and cultural space as well as physical space. Often, the goal in such projects is to evoke a more diverse and dynamic portrait of human experience as it is actually lived. (see External Links)
For example, programs that involve community members and youth in active community mapping for social empowerment include Amigos de las Américas
, Video Machete in Chicago, as well as Community Youth Mapping and Mapping Within (see External Links). There have been significant efforts to use community mapping practices to promote environmentally sound practices, including Green Map
ping (see External Link) which involves locals in identifying and siting (on a map) ecology-minded ("green") businesses, spaces, and organizations. A recent California effort involves citizens in mapping forest fires and related community action plan. A variety of resources are available to support those involved in mapping, including resource lists, guidelines, and lesson plans. (see External Links)
Sonic representations of place, sometimes called "soundmaps," challenge traditional assumptions of what maps can do and offer new ways of participating in documentary practice. Soundmaps extend opportunities for defining place and expressing local culture, and they offer the added dimension of time. By enabling the integration of sound, text, still and moving images, mapping uniquely allows for more choices of representation and documentation without necessarily privileging one form above the rest. By doing so, voice is given to more ways of knowing and expressing—including 'remixing', for example—in a way that recognizes and affirms the diversity of experiences and representations within communities. (see External Links)
The emergence of the Geoweb
is another example of how changes in the ways people document geographical space is also broadening notions of documentary practice. Geoweb refers to virtual maps or "geobrowsers" such as Google Earth
that allow users to search for images, texts, videos or other media content through interactive, photographic maps of the earth. All information on a geoweb is organized by geographic tags tied to a particular location on the map. Since its inception, usage of the Geoweb has been widespread and varied; including recreational, humanitarian, political and military uses. (see External Links) New mapping technologies make new documentary practices imaginable by allowing documentary producers to locate, store, share, and network images and information that capture the ever-shifting landscapes of the world, updated in real-time.
On the global scale, access to new media with potential to generate new documentary practices is still confined to an economically privileged few, giving rise to the digital divide
. However, the first digital divide was largely due to economics and politics of broadband cable and expensive computers needed to access the internet. With the proliferation of wireless networks and mobile phones, the divide has diminished considerably, as more remote areas are easier to reach through wireless signals and mobile devices are far less expensive than computers. While there is great potential for new technologies to continue to broaden definitions of documentary practice, enabling more people to collaborate and “document from within” their own communities, questions about who controls and regulates the networks and distribution methods as well as the increasingly advanced skill needed to fully participate in emerging practices will likely be a core question for some time.
Traditional definitions put forth by scholars of documentary film address documentary practice in terms of formal codes, categories and conventions. These are used by filmmakers to create "non-fictional" representations of the historical world. Subsequent definitions made by others define various approaches to documentary in terms of how they use such rhetorical strategies as voice, structure and style. Such definitions focus on finished documentary projects and how they measure up to contemporary notions of truth and representation.
However, recent cultural, technological, stylistic, and social shifts have turned attention in documentary studies to the process of documenting as such. Documentary-makers and scholars alike are showing interest in the present moment and how new media tools can be used by documentary-makers to initiate formation of new communities, conversations, and ways of being together.
Such interests characterized Conceptual Art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
works of the 1960s and 1970s. The connective potentialities of art as a practice are currently being explored in the contemporary Relational Aesthetics movement. In these movements, the potentialities and dilemmas of aesthetic practice take precedence over traditional concerns with the finished artwork. Likewise, growing interest in documentary as a practice is opening the definition of documentary beyond considerations of finished documents, to include the act of documenting itself. This expansion of the definition of documentary work became possible when consumer-level video cameras became widely available. Some collectives of video producers used this new technology to address issues such as politics of cultural representation, the critique of daily life, the deconstruction of culture control mechanisms, and the subversion of authority.
While practices of documentary-makers continue to be informed by existing documentary traditions, Conventions in documentary
Conventions in documentary
A documentary film is one that presents information about factual topics. These films have a variety of aims, to record important events and ideas; to inform viewers; to convey opinions and to create public interest...
, and genres, they are also reshaped by emerging media environments, content, devices and uses for those devices. Emerging media, in turn, are greatly affected by their political, economic, and cultural contexts. Various emerging technologies and the situations in which they are used present documentary-makers with new challenges, opportunities, and dilemmas. This makes documentary practice dynamic and ever-evolving.
Many documentary-makers seek innovative approaches to their field in response to emerging technologies and the practices they make possible. Continuous innovation in documentary practice prevents the "documentary idea" from becoming stagnant or locked into any single generic form. This challenges each generation of documentary-makers and viewers to approach documentary-making as a living practice.
Emerging media
New documentary practices associated with cinéma véritéCinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
and Direct Cinema
Direct Cinema
Direct Cinema is a documentary genre that originated between 1958 and 1962 in North America, principally in the Canadian province of Quebec and the United States...
began to appear in the mid-1950s when technological developments made film and then video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
more portable, accessible and affordable. This allowed more people to engage in the practice of documenting. The 1991 video of Rodney King
Rodney King
Rodney Glen King is an American best known for his involvement in a police brutality case involving the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991...
being subjected to police restraint is an example of the continuing power of this shift. An ordinary citizen was able to capture the police brutality
Police brutality
Police brutality is the intentional use of excessive force, usually physical, but potentially also in the form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation, by a police officer....
with his camcorder, transforming him from a witness to an amateur documentary filmmaker. Scholars have cited the events following the widespread dissemination of the Rodney King video as one of the earliest examples of "participatory culture
Participatory culture
Participatory culture is a neologism in reference of, but opposite to a Consumer culture — in other words a culture in which private persons do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers . The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published...
."
Today's new media
New media
New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
continue to reshape documentary practices in significant ways. Recording technologies embedded within personal portable devices such as video-equipped mobile phones and hand-held digital video
Digital video
Digital video is a type of digital recording system that works by using a digital rather than an analog video signal.The terms camera, video camera, and camcorder are used interchangeably in this article.- History :...
and still cameras have made it possible for vast numbers of people to engage in citizen journalism
Citizen journalism
Citizen journalism is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information...
and "documentary practices." Additionally, Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
platforms such as video and photo-sharing websites and blogs now enable amateur "documentarians" to share and collaborate on content in ways never before possible. A practice that Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold
-See also:* Collective intelligence* Information society* The WELL* Virtual community-External links:***** at TED conference** a 48MB Quicktime movie, hosted by the Internet Archive...
and Justin Hall
Justin Hall
Justin Hall , is an American freelance journalist who is best known as a pioneer blogger , and for writing reviews from game conferences such as E3 as well as the Tokyo Game Show....
have labeled p2p Journalism
Peer-to-peer (meme)
Peer-to-peer is not restricted to technology, but covers every social process with a peer-to-peer dynamic, whether these peers are humans or computers. Peer-to-peer as a term originated from the popular concept of P2P distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between...
, now exists at the blurred boundary where traditional definitions of journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
and documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
meet and influence each other.
Promises of new media technologies have raised expectations of a freer flow of ideas and content. Scholars are studying how participants in documenting practices engage in the social process of acquiring knowledge, sharing stories, and documenting events-in-the-making. Through such practices, social ties among people and groups as they arbitrate what qualifies as knowledge evolve continuously, facilitating the emergence of what Pierre Lévy refers to as collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
.
By enabling more people to record and share their experiences, emerging media technologies have transformed the way people document reality and how they participate in the very events that they are documenting. Everyday life can become performative as people respond to encounters and events through documentary practices, creating records of daily life which they then share with others via the Internet. For many people, digital media-making becomes a form of documentary practice when the results are created for and shared via social-networking sites like MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
and Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
.
The 2006 documentary of a Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....
concert, Awesome; I F***n' Shot That!, directed by Adam Yauch
Adam Yauch
Adam Nathaniel Yauch , , is a founding member of hip hop trio the Beastie Boys. He is frequently known by his stage name, MCA, and other pseudonyms such as Nathanial Hörnblowér.-Early life:...
, is an example of how participation in documentary practices transforms the way people take part in events such as concerts. A live performance in 2004 was documented by 50 fans who were all given Hi8 cameras and told to film their experience of the concert. Their footage was later edited together with professionally shot footage. It provided contrasting points of view and established dialogue between artists and fans.
Some scholars argue that as an increasingly widespread practice, the nascent cellphone documentary genre creates more possibilities and forms of social agency; people use cell phones to document public events and network their collective responses; others have used their phones to mobilize crowds during public demonstrations.
Mobile communications devices
The pursuit of "filmic truth" has been a hallmark of documentary practice since early film-makers such as the Lumiere Brothers, Robert Flaherty and Dziga VertovDziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...
created its foundations. (see External Links)
Today, people use mobile devices in ways that open new possibilities for the practices of documenting—especially those practices involved in efforts to achieve "filmic truth." For example, in June 2006 a 93-minute remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
's documentary entitled Love Meetings
Love Meetings
Love Meetings is a 1965 feature-length documentary, shot by Italian writer and director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who also acts as the interviewer, appearing in many scenes....
(1965), in which he interviewed Italian citizens about their views on sex in postwar Italy, was shot entirely on a cell phone by Marcello Mencarini and Barbara Seghezzi. Entitled New Love Meetings, the remake was filmed in MPEG4 format using a Nokia N90. It is the first feature-length movie to be shot entirely on a mobile phone. Their premise was that even though they asked their subjects the same questions that Pasolini had posed, the results of their documentary would be clearly influenced by the medium they used to capture the images. They believed that the use of a cellphone, an instrument of daily life, produced an intimacy absent in Pasolini's movie, making people more spontaneous and open, creating a dialogue more like a chat than an interview. They propose that the line between subject and observer becomes thinner through such practices, as the documentary film-makers present themselves as "normal people" using their cell phones to preserve an instant. New Love Meetings is a prime example of how a specific emerging technology, the mobile phone, is shifting documentary practice today. (see External Links)
The use of the so-called "fourth screen
Fourth screen
"Fourth screen" is a generally accepted term used in a number of advertising and technology industries, to refer to a small portable video screen such as those found in mobile phones or other portable electronic devices such as a video iPod player...
" (the first screen being cinema, the second television, the third the computer, the fourth the mobile device) as a documentary tool has become a subject of academic study. In fall of 2007, graduate students of The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
produced an experimental five-minute metadocumentary shot with three cell phones. It explored the possibilities of mobile media devices as a medium for documentary practice by using them to restate Dziga Vertov's perspectives on filmic truth as expressed in his film: Man with a Movie Camera
Man with a Movie Camera
Man with a Movie Camera , sometimes called The Man with the Movie Camera, The Man with a Camera, The Man With the Kinocamera, or Living Russia is an experimental 1929 silent documentary film, with no story and no actors, by Russian director Dziga Vertov, edited by his wife Elizaveta...
.
Surveillance media
SurveillanceSurveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
is the act of observation or monitoring, usually of places, people, and activity, and typically without the subject's knowledge. Much of contemporary surveillance involves observation from a distance with the help of electronic devices, such as telephone tapping
Telephone tapping
Telephone tapping is the monitoring of telephone and Internet conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connection was an actual electrical tap on the telephone line...
, directional microphones
Parabolic microphone
A parabolic microphone is a microphone that uses a parabolic reflector to collect and focus sound waves onto a receiver, in much the same way that a parabolic antenna does with radio waves...
, covert listening device
Covert listening device
A covert listening device, more commonly known as a bug or a wire, is usually a combination of a miniature radio transmitter with a microphone. The use of bugs, called bugging, is a common technique in surveillance, espionage and in police investigations.A bug does not have to be a device...
s or "bugs", subminiature cameras, closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
, GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking
GPS tracking
A GPS tracking unit is a device that uses the Global Positioning System to determine the precise location of a vehicle, person, or other asset to which it is attached and to record the position of the asset at regular intervals...
, electronic tagging
Electronic tagging
Electronic tagging is a form of non-surreptitious surveillance consisting of an electronic device attached to a person or vehicle, especially certain criminals, allowing their whereabouts to be monitored. In general, devices locate themselves using GPS and report their position back to a control...
, motion tracking
Video tracking
Video tracking is the process of locating a moving object over time using a camera. It has a variety of uses, some of which are: human-computer interaction, security and surveillance, video communication and compression, augmented reality, traffic control, medical imaging and video editing...
, satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
s, internet and computer surveillance
Computer surveillance
Computer surveillance is the act of performing surveillance of computer activity, and of data stored on a hard drive or being transferred over the Internet....
.
Historically, surveillance has often been associated with governmental and other large organizational security practices. However, artists and activists have challenged those conventional practices. An early example is the film Empire
Empire (1964 film)
Empire is a silent, black-and-white film made by Andy Warhol. It consists of eight hours and five minutes of continuous slow motion footage of the Empire State Building in New York City. Abridged showings of the film were never allowed, and supposedly the very unwatchability of the film was an...
, made by artist Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
in 1964. It consisted of an extreme long shot of the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
, held for eight hours in real time, challenging the boundaries of surveillance and watchability. More recently, scholars such as UCLA cinema professor Steve Mamber, have turned attention to the growing trend of using inexpensive, small cameras to unobtrusively record events of daily life. To examine hidden-camera video practices, in 2003 Mamber asked acquaintances if they or anyone they knew might have access to such footage, creating an online archive of the footage. Mamber described the growing practice as "both a widely pervasive activity and an oddly unexamined one." In response, he established the UCLA Center for Hidden Camera Research, another example of how emerging technologies are shifting documentary practice. (see External Links)
Another practice that has emerged out of the introduction of new surveillance technologies is "inverse surveillance", also known as Sousveillance
Sousveillance
Sousveillance refers to the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies.Sousveillance has also been described as "inverse surveillance", i.e...
. Launched in 2004, CARPE (Capture, Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences)is a project conceived with the idea of recording and archiving one's whole life. Some of the technologies developed within this project have become potential new tools of documentary practice. For example, the EyeTap
Eyetap
An EyeTap is a device that is worn in front of the eye that acts as a camera to record the scene available to the eye as well as a display to superimpose a computer-generated imagery on the original scene available to the eye....
, developed by University of Toronto Professor Steve Mann, presents itself as an ideal device for continuous and inconspicuous recording as well as inverse surveillance.
Some scholars assert that these new devices enable us to imagine a new form of citizenship (the "monitorial citizen") that hinges on documentary practices. This concept is illustrated by parents watching their small children at the community pool. They look inactive, but they are poised for action if action is required. The emphasis is not so much on information gathering as it is on keeping a watchful eye—even while the monitorial citizen is doing something else.
Projects such as The Canary Project’s photographic monitoring of global warming effects (see External Links) and the Center for Land Use Interpretation
Center for Land Use Interpretation
The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a non-profit "research organization involved in exploring, examining, and understanding land and landscape issues...
's Data Base of citizen-created documentation of land use practices exemplify the link between surveillance, emerging documentary practices and monitorial citizenship.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
, in partnership with Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, presents another example of how new media are allowing surveillance and documentary practices to inform each other. This partnership uses satellite imagery
Satellite imagery
Satellite imagery consists of photographs of Earth or other planets made by means of artificial satellites.- History :The first images from space were taken on sub-orbital flights. The U.S-launched V-2 flight on October 24, 1946 took one image every 1.5 seconds...
to help NGOs document atrocities in isolated crisis zones such as Darfur
Darfur
Darfur is a region in western Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1916. The region is divided into three federal states: West Darfur, South Darfur, and North Darfur...
and Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
. By purchasing images from commercial satellites that correspond to mapping coordinates, NGOs are increasingly able to provide visual evidence of refugee camps and burned villages; events and activities that would be impossible to image without the satellite technology. (see External Links)
Mapping applications
Traditionally, mapsMAPS
Maps is the plural of map, a visual representation of an area.As an acronym, MAPS may refer to:* Mail Abuse Prevention System, an organisation that provides anti-spam support...
have been created to orient people. They have delineated boundaries by using static, two-dimensional symbols to represent dynamic, three-dimensional spaces that undergo continual change. Both form and content are fixed in these traditional maps, leaving out the real-time experiences of those people who live in and define the space being represented. However, the proliferation of portable media devices that can record and distribute digital images, video, audio and text, combined with the capability to reach previously unreachable audiences via the Web and through vast wireless networks, now makes it possible to transform conventional maps into living documents.
New, map-based documentary practices employ maps as useful tools for interrogating the present, transforming maps from static representations into events-in-the-making. Personal narratives, experiences, and memories are being used to create maps that represent social and cultural space as well as physical space. Often, the goal in such projects is to evoke a more diverse and dynamic portrait of human experience as it is actually lived. (see External Links)
For example, programs that involve community members and youth in active community mapping for social empowerment include Amigos de las Américas
Amigos de las Américas
Amigos de las Américas is a nonprofit organization based in Houston, Texas that creates opportunities for high school and college-age students to collaborate with local communities in leadership roles to promote public health, education, and community development throughout the Americas...
, Video Machete in Chicago, as well as Community Youth Mapping and Mapping Within (see External Links). There have been significant efforts to use community mapping practices to promote environmentally sound practices, including Green Map
Green Map
]Green Maps are locally created environmentally themed maps which use a universal symbol set and mapmaking resources provided by the non-profit Green Map System...
ping (see External Link) which involves locals in identifying and siting (on a map) ecology-minded ("green") businesses, spaces, and organizations. A recent California effort involves citizens in mapping forest fires and related community action plan. A variety of resources are available to support those involved in mapping, including resource lists, guidelines, and lesson plans. (see External Links)
Sonic representations of place, sometimes called "soundmaps," challenge traditional assumptions of what maps can do and offer new ways of participating in documentary practice. Soundmaps extend opportunities for defining place and expressing local culture, and they offer the added dimension of time. By enabling the integration of sound, text, still and moving images, mapping uniquely allows for more choices of representation and documentation without necessarily privileging one form above the rest. By doing so, voice is given to more ways of knowing and expressing—including 'remixing', for example—in a way that recognizes and affirms the diversity of experiences and representations within communities. (see External Links)
The emergence of the Geoweb
Geoweb
The Geospatial Web or Geoweb is a relatively new term that implies the merging of geographical information with the abstract information that currently dominates the Internet...
is another example of how changes in the ways people document geographical space is also broadening notions of documentary practice. Geoweb refers to virtual maps or "geobrowsers" such as Google Earth
Google Earth
Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency funded company acquired by Google in 2004 . It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite...
that allow users to search for images, texts, videos or other media content through interactive, photographic maps of the earth. All information on a geoweb is organized by geographic tags tied to a particular location on the map. Since its inception, usage of the Geoweb has been widespread and varied; including recreational, humanitarian, political and military uses. (see External Links) New mapping technologies make new documentary practices imaginable by allowing documentary producers to locate, store, share, and network images and information that capture the ever-shifting landscapes of the world, updated in real-time.
On the global scale, access to new media with potential to generate new documentary practices is still confined to an economically privileged few, giving rise to the digital divide
Digital divide
The Digital Divide refers to inequalities between individuals, households, business, and geographic areas at different socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies and Internet connectivity and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information...
. However, the first digital divide was largely due to economics and politics of broadband cable and expensive computers needed to access the internet. With the proliferation of wireless networks and mobile phones, the divide has diminished considerably, as more remote areas are easier to reach through wireless signals and mobile devices are far less expensive than computers. While there is great potential for new technologies to continue to broaden definitions of documentary practice, enabling more people to collaborate and “document from within” their own communities, questions about who controls and regulates the networks and distribution methods as well as the increasingly advanced skill needed to fully participate in emerging practices will likely be a core question for some time.
External links
- http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-25607-en.html
- http://mamber.filmtv.ucla.edu/index.html
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060501701.html
- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/google-satellite-focuses-on-the-atrocities-in-darfur-444313.html
- http://www.sigmm.org/Members/jgemmell/CARPE
- http://www.abc.net.au/wing/community/chainofschools.htm
- http://shinealightproductions.com/Mobiles/MobileMediaDevices.html
- http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-12/st_bromley